Keren G. Raz, in her April 7th in-depth article, "Campus construction, tuition pays off debts," did an admirable job covering the complex subject of how the university funds its acquisition of capital facilities. However, some additional clarification might well be helpful to your readers.

Late in the article, it is noted that our current annual total debt service is $52 million, or about 4 percent of our $1.2 billion annual operating budget ÷ that is well under our legal debt limit of 8 percent. Tuition certainly provides an important source of funds to retire debt; however, it is clearly not the only source. While tuition contributes $20.6 million, the self-supporting Auxiliaries carry $21.7 million, Indirect Cost Recovery from our research enterprise pays $8.2 million, the Technology Research Initiative Fund gives $1.0 million and Investment Income and Administrative Service Charge pick up the remaining $.5 million.

While the state's Constitution has a prohibition against bonded debt greater than $350,000, the Arizona Board of Regents is not subject to that same restriction. Through the years, a process has evolved whereby the Legislature provided bonding authority through specific authorizing legislation for which the Board would issue debt to be retired by the use of "retained" student fees (tuition). There are historic files dating back to the mid-1960s demonstrating that convention.

The Legislature also created the Joint Committee on Capital Review with specific project oversight authority, and it more recently passed debt capacity legislation that replaced the historic "specific dollar amount" authority with a "percentage limitation" of 8 percent.

It is important to note that we ask the Legislature, through our Legislative Budget Request, to offset tuition dollars being committed to retire debt with a General Fund allocation. While the Legislature may not always have responded affirmatively, we have had some success. For example, in the biennial budget for FY02 and FY03 the university received a $4.8 million General Fund increase to offset the tuition dollars we committed to debt service for the Integrated Learning Center, Main Library Improvements and Phase V Utility Infrastructure Improvements.

When the Legislature restores the tuition revenues used for debt service with General Fund (taxpayer) money, this is equivalent to using General Fund money to pay the debt service and keeping the tuition revenues for university operations so that there is no upward pressure on tuition resulting from the construction. Nonetheless, the books still show the debt service as being paid by tuition. This produces a misleading statistic, quoted in the Wildcat article, implying that a certain fraction of each student's tuition payment has been made necessary by the construction of buildings.

As the article so aptly demonstrated, the beauty of any one project is clearly in the eyes of the beholder. If you are in architecture, we are long overdue; if you are not in public health, pharmacy or nursing, we are throwing away money that could be used for your classes. Such is the nature of a complex, dynamic, Association of American Universities, Research I University under such severe economic pressure that it is impossible to satisfy all the demands of all our constituents. Nevertheless, we have a president who works daily through the Committees on Space, Finance, Strategic Planning and Budgeting and his Cabinet to find the balance necessary to secure our future in terms of both program and facilities.

Budget director Dick Roberts can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.